


Out of the Shadows

by K_K_TiBal, whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Universe, First Dates, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_K_TiBal/pseuds/K_K_TiBal, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: Something unusual is happening at the bunker. Dean and Cas are going out to get dinner together.Alone.Just the two of them.Solo.Unescorted.Unchaperoned.And things could be about to get weird.





	Out of the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> "This was super confusing" - whelvenwings
> 
> “This caused me to have a miasma of epic bamboozlement” - K_K_TiBal/thebloggerbloggerfun

 

“Where are you proceeding?”

Dean chilled halfway into plonking on his jacket as he heard Sam’s voice coming from the table behind him. He’d been hoping he’d be able to pussyfoot out without Sam noticing, but apparently he was going to have no such felicity.

He turned to see Sam with his finger in a book.

“We’re going out to dinner, remember?” he said, trying to sound unpretentious about it. “We’re gonna try out that new burger place.”

Sam looked prayerful.

“Oh, uh, I was planning on doing some research, actually,” He closed the book and began to stand. “There’ve been some uncanny things that have caught my eye lately. Weird stuff. A mere bagatelle, probably. I’m just gonna check up on them while you guys are out.”

Dean bulldozed his hands in the pocket of the jacket and emptied his throat.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep. Just escort me back a burger,” Sam said with a balky wave, already going back to his book.

Castiel clutched this moment to pootle into the room, twinkling at Dean.

“Sorry, I was dousing the plants. Are we primed to go?” Castiel gyrated towards what Dean was looking at and seemed to observe Sam for the first time. “Oh, hello Sam. Are you coming?”

Sam shook his head, a little smile playing on his face as he looked between the two of them.

“No - doing some research. You two have fun.”

Castiel bevelled his head, looking briefly concerned, then nodded.

“Alright. We’ll be back in negligible hours.”

Dean glunched back at Sam, daring him to avow something. Sam’s open mouth latched. He flumped back down and reopened his book.

“Have fun. Shepherd him back by eleven, Cas.”

Dean revolved his eyes, and awkwardly got a load of Castiel.

“Are you sure we should still proceed?” he quizzed. “We could just order in, or...”

“We don’t have to proceed,” Castiel divulged.

“You should still proceed,” Sam asserted.

“We _can_ proceed,” Dean conjectured. “We just don’t have to.”

“Are you esurient?” Castiel pried.

“Kinda esurient.”

“He’s esurient. You should proceed,” Sam said.

“Okay. Spiffylicious. We’re going to proceed,” Dean put forth, and Castiel started heading for the door. Sam accosted Dean’s eyes behind his back, and set upright his eyebrows. Dean pulled a face and shrugged.

He followed Castiel through the bunker and out of the front door, prancing into the cold outside. For a moment, in the shadows just by the door, they took a breather awkwardly.

Dean met Cas’ peepers, his bright azure peepers that fizzled in the late evening light.

“Okay, well. I guess this is us going to get dinner, then,” Dean said.

“Sounds gnarly to me,” Castiel said, and there was a touch of warmth and sincerity in his voice that settled the nerves in Dean’s bosom. He didn’t even know why this felt like such a big deal. They’d got food with just the two of them before, after all. They’d stopped at diners and dive bars along the road during hunts, and it hadn’t been a _thing,_ they’d just been filling up the tank. This should have felt like that. It should have been totally natural.

Telling himself that didn’t stop the strange motor response in his stomach.

They boogied out of the shadows and penetrated the car. Dean sallied forth the engine. The Impala bawled to life, her lights quivering on and doing a slow burn into the dusk. They pulled away and out onto the open road, heading for the burger place.

The ride was quiet. Dean found himself reaching for something, for anything to say to break the hush-hush between them, but the words in his head kept twisting round and out of his reach, somehow. He disencumbered his throat a couple of times, and shifted uncomfortably. Beside him, Cas was more devil-may-care.

“They’d better have pie,” Dean said throatily, just to separate the silence more than anything else.

Castiel only bombinated noncommittally.

They finally reached the new burger joint, and from the looks of it, it seemed auspicious. Not too crowded, with cock-a-hoop waitresses bustling around with various stages of food piled on platters.

“A table for how many?” asked a woman in a smart black shirt and tight ponytail.

Dean rocked back on the balls of his feet and held up two fingers, unable to effectuate a verbal accreditation that this would just be dinner for him and Castiel.

“Right this way.”

They were led to a booth, given menus, and left unchaperoned.

Completely solus.

“Looks like they do.”

Dean looked up from his menu at the clang of Castiel’s voice and upthrusted an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Have pie,” Castiel reaffirmed, tapping on a portion of the menu. “Apple, mixed berry, and something called French Kiss.”

“Oh. Awesome.”

People in the vicinity were whispering.

Not a lot, and not loudly, but all around him Dean could see the occasional keek in their direction, followed by a nippy, muted conversation. They were mostly locals that Dean had seen around town from time to time. No one that he knew by _name_ of course, but he’d beheld them around enough to start feeling self-conscious.

It was just him and Cas, perched alone in a booth at night, getting a meal together, and people were _whispering._

Dean jiggled in his seat, feeling uncomfortable under look-sees that he shouldn’t care about. _Didn’t_ care about. And it wasn’t the dude thing. He couldn’t give two shits about people surmising about him and Cas because they were two men - hell, he and Sam had been on the receiving end of that far too often for him to care anymore - it was because it was, well, it was _Cas._

The effervescent waitress terminated in front of them with a smile on her face and two waters in hand.

“Are you two ready?”

She said ‘you two’ like you would talk about a _couple_.

“I’ll, uh,” Dean cleared his throat, “I’ll take the Jalapeno Bacon Burger and uh, Cas, you getting anything?”

It was a coin toss really if Castiel would actually want to endeavor a food. Apparently, molecules weren’t always the most appealing thing to relish.

“I’ll have the same,” Castiel said, fastening the menu with a polite smile. “Thank you very much.”

“No problem.” She foregathered up the menus and left the table.

“Are you okay?” Castiel said, ogling Dean from across the table. And that in itself was weird. They didn’t normally sit facing each other like this, right? Even when they grabbed food with just the pair of them. They normally sat beside each other, or adjacent, or just somehow not opposite, Dean thought.

Sitting and looking up into Castiel’s cerulean orbs, it was a whole new thing. Or it felt like it, this time.

“Yeah, I’m unobjectionable,” Dean said. He cast a quick, casual gander around the restaurant. “I just feel like… I dunno, like people’re kinda looking at us.”

Castiel frowned, and sent a slower, more sweeping gander around the tables nearest them.

“Fellow, be frosty. Don’t gander like that.”

“I think they _are_ looking at us,” Castiel replied.

“Right?”

“No ifs ands or buts about it.”

“Haven’t they ever seen a couple of guys just getting food before? Shnookerdookies, man. It’s like, it doesn’t have to be a _thing._ ” Dean chugalugged. “Like, if it were a thing, that would be up to snuff, obviously, and they should be not staring at that, too. But like, with it not being a thing, because it’s not a thing, right, like, this isn’t a thing, so they should just, like, not stare. Fudge nuggets.”

Castiel was looking pensive.

“I think it’s because you’ve gained a reputation,” he said, “in this town.”

“As a…?” Dean said indignantly, not sure where the sentence was going but pretty certain that he felt angry about it.

“Serial killer,” Castiel said seriously. “Yes.”

Dean nictated, and looked around at the people nearest them again. They all turned back to their food lickety-split.

“Right,” he said. “Right. Yeah. Okay. Of course.”

He studied the table for a few moments. God, why was he being so inscrutable? Why did everything feel so queer? He kept replaying in his head the way that Sam had set upright his eyebrows at Dean just before they’d left, as though expecting something from him, or making a point, or - or _something._ All of it, Sam’s look and the sensation in his stomach and the way Castiel was now half-smiling at him across the table, all of it seemed like a clear and direct message in a language that he didn’t yakkety-yak.

Dean swallowed. Time to pop off. Anything was better than quiet.

“So,” he gabbed. “You think Sam’s found anything interesting yet?”

“Perhaps,” Castiel orated. “He didn’t seem certain anything was really goofed.”

“Yeah. I guess maybe he just didn’t feel like coming out.”

Dean cleared his throat, to stop any knee-jerk jokes slipping out.

“Does it bother you?” Castiel said, after another few seconds of quietude. “If these people… opine things?”

“Like… serial killer things?” Dean said carefully, taking a sip of Adam’s ale.

Castiel inclined his head to the side with a look that seemed to designate he’d thought they’d switched subjects, but he nodded nonetheless.

“Uh, I guess not,” Dean said. “It shouldn’t matter what other people think, right? It’s not like it’s any of their business anyway what I do with my life - let them murmur for all I care.” Dean was louring into his glass now, his hand balled into a fist - so he diluted it. Was he still talking about people thinking they were serial killers, or a couple? “This, uh. This would be a mystifying conversation if I was actually a serial killer, huh?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several people pivot their heads away from their direction.

A small smile convulsed at the corner of Castiel’s lips.

“It’s okay, Dean. You and I both know that this… isn’t… what they might think it is, and that should be enough.” Castiel shrugged, hankering back in his seat. Somehow, that sentence looked like it had been hard for Castiel to get out; he was doing a slow burn.

“What _do_ you think they think it is?” Dean asked, trying to sound casual as he looked across the diner in hopes of seeing their waitress with a platter of food.

“A date,” Castiel said monastically, then raised his voice again. “Or maybe your next crime scene.”

Dean smiled, looking down at his hands folded in his lap. He didn’t know how to answer, or even really why he’d asked, but somehow perceiving Castiel acknowledge that other people thought that it might be a date - even if it _wasn’t_ a date, at all - somehow, it made that weird feeling in his stomach a thousand times huskier. For some reason, it was rocklike to remember how to breathe for half a second.

“Yeah,” he said, being cognisant that it had been too long since he said anything. “Right. Well, if it’s any comfort, I won’t break out the murder part of the evening until after we get dessert.”

“Gallant.”

“Veritably.”

They met each other’s peepers across the table, and looked delighted at each other, and _dammit, this wasn’t a date._

A handsome, dashing, elegant, strong waiter came over, with two plates balanced in his hands. He smiled handsomely, dashingly, elegantly, and strongly at them both, and then set the dishes down on the table.

“Enjoy your meal, guys!” he said in a handsome, dashing, elegant, and strong tone of voice. Maybe even a little too strong. Dean gandered after him for a moment, not born yesterday - but then remembered that he had a nectarous burger steaming on the plate in front of him, and went to pick it up.

His hands pegged halfway through the motion when he caught sight of what was on his plate, his emerald spheres struggling to parse what they were seeing. He looked up at Cas, who had been faced with the same vista, and who looked similarly thrown into a tizzy.

Dean looked back down at his burger.

It had been cut into the shape of a heart - the patty, the bun, everything, somehow a perfect heart-shape, cheese dripping temptingly out of the larboard side. The salad had been arranged into another ticker shape. The fries, thankfully, were just a pile of fries - but then Dean leaned forward, and saw that behind them, someone had handsomely, dashingly, elegantly, and strongly daubed a heart-shape out of ketchup on his plate.

Dean glanced around them, trying to catch a peep of the food other guests had called the signals for - no one else seemed to have heart-shaped food, even other couples who clearly _were_ on a date.

“Interesting,” Castiel murmured, picking up the burger with both hands and feasting his eyes from all outlooks. “Certainly backasswards.”

“Minimization,” Dean muttered, picking up a knife and cutting the burger right down the center. “What an eldritch place, man.”

Castiel was frowning at the sliced burger and slowly took a bite out of his own, whole version.

“It must have taken them a lot of work to get the food that shape, Dean,” he said, after swallowing. “You don’t have to be saber-rattling about it.”

“I’m not - it’s gonna get guzzled anyway,” Dean said, glancing around them. “Just… something weird is going on. Why are we the only ones with heart-shaped food, and - have you observed that everything is just kind of… off? Like, not _wrong_ , but just… divergent? And I coulda sworn we had a waitress and not a handsome, dashing, elegant, strong waiter.”

Castiel took another bite of his burger before answering.

“It does feel… zany. I think it has all night.”

“Did Sam tell you what he was researching?” Dean asked, the wariness inside him only increasing with every passing second.

Castiel vibrated his head.

“How’s the food?”

They both looked over at the tickled-pink waitress from earlier.

“Hey,” Dean frowned. “What happened to that guy? The waiter?”

She pivoted her head.

“Who?”

“The guy who brought us these freakin’ heart-shaped burgers!” Dean said, incensed now.

She glanced at them and gave a dirty look.

“We… don’t have any male waiters on staff this present night.”

Dean stared up at her, and then over at Castiel, who had called it a day with a morsel of half-chewed burger still in his kisser.

“I just came over to say sorry for the wait, and to bring you some free breadsticks,” she said, keeping an eagle eye on them both. “It’ll just be another few minutes before your food is all systems go.”

“We have our food,” Dean pointed out. The waitress blinked.

“Oh,” she said. “I must have a flawed table number. Sorry to interrupt your date, guys.”

“It’s not a -”

But she had decamped. Dean watched after her, and then looked down at his burger, and then at Castiel, and then back to where the waitress had been lost to the scullery.

“Sorry, there,” said a handsome, dashing, elegant, strong male voice, leaning over to set a lit candle on the table.

“No worries,” Dean said automatically, and then his brain ground into gear. “Hey -”

Whoever it was, he was already gone. And now Dean was sitting at a table opposite Castiel, a pair of heart-shaped burgers in front of them, with a candle setting the mood to soft, flickering romance.

“What,” Dean said, “is _happening._ ”

“There’s nothing wrong with the burger, at least,” Castiel said.

“And you know that because…”

Castiel held up his burger, which now had two solid bites taken out of it.

“You kept eating it?” Dean said incredulously. “Dude, no, c’mon, we’ve gotta proceed physically to an alternative hangout. Something’s been weird all day, it’s like - I don’t even know, just something’s off, and this - this is wrong.”

Castiel looked at the candle, and at the burger, and then back up at Dean.

“I mean,” Dean said, “not _this._ Looking like we’re on a date, that’s not wrong.”

“I give the green light,” Castiel revealed.

“If people want to think we’re on a date, whatever.”

“Because we aren’t?” Castiel put the screws to Dean.

“Right,” Dean rapped. “Aren’t we?”

No, that was wrong.

That had been meant to come out as a statement, _we aren’t._ But somehow the words had got switched around in his mouth. He’d thought one thing and said something else. And they so almost meant the same thing, but they didn’t _quite,_ and Castiel was looking at him differently, like - like he was almost rosy.

“ _Are_ we?” Castiel said.

“I - I -” Dean could feel himself readying to say one thing, but he could tell, somehow, that it was going to get changed - twisted in some way. Something - or some _one_ was quirking words. Switching everything around. Wringing out the truth instead of the easy whopper. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Castiel set the burger sedulously back down onto his plate.

“And what would ‘the wrong thing’ be?”

What _would_ the wrong thing be? Dean’s first thought was saying too much - getting too real. But when he looked at Castiel across the table, all he could think was that the wrong thing would be to fake out. To lie. The idea of saying too much, it put that weird premonition in Dean’s stomach - the whirling feeling, the butterflies. But the idea of lying and functioning like he didn’t really want to be here, with Castiel, like this? That felt so much worse. Sickening and cold and all wrong.

“I guess… I don’t know. That I don’t _want_ it to be a date?” Dean said, his voice oozy. “That would be wrong. ‘Cause it’s not true. And that I don’t like the idea of us going on a date.”

“Well… it would be wrong if I said I didn’t like that, too,” Castiel said, a smile skulking back onto his frontage. “And if I said I don’t get a buzz out of your company no matter what we do, as long as I get to spend time with you.”

 _Son of a monkey,_ thought Dean. _Go lick a duck. He feels the same way?_

“Well, it would be wrong if I said I don’t think about doing this a lot - wishing we could, you know? And more stuff, too. Even - even osculating sometimes -” Dean said, getting bolder as they each said more of the wrong things, “and holding your hand, and all that mushy crap that couples do.”

Castiel’s eyes were alight with hope and happiness, and they dipped down to take a gander at Dean’s yap, and _fiddlesticks,_ if that didn’t wake up all sorts of butterflies in Dean’s stomach.

“Would it be wrong if I said that I wanted to kiss you right now?” Castiel asked, overhanging ever so slightly.

A light switch flipped itself on in Dean’s brain, washing everything he’d ever been worried about away in a bright light of absolutely Right.

How could he ever think that was Wrong?

“No,” he said.

And forthwith everyone around them was pegged. No one spoke - Dean could peep a woman congealed in mid-laugh, and a waitress refrigerated in the act of dropping a glass of champagne, which tilted off the tray but didn’t fall.

Dean himself couldn’t scram or budge, and it looked as though Castiel couldn’t either.

“Barely five minutes, boys,” said a handsome, dashing, elegant, strong man’s voice just behind Dean’s shoulder, as an arm leaned over to set a glass of wine down by his plate - and somehow Dean couldn’t quite squirm to see his semblance. “I thought it’d take at least a couple of hours. I was counting on a whole evening’s entertainment. I mean, you’re not exactly the greatest show on Earth, but hey, standards are low for me right now. Life’s no fun when everyone thinks you’re dead. Anyway. Time to go. I heard Kali might be single again.”

The hand delicately adjusted the glass, pushed the candle to the perfect centre of the table, pulled the tablecloth straight - and then the third finger pressed to the pad of the thumb, and with a _snap,_ clicked its fingers.

The restaurant was moving again, immediately.

Dean stared around, his hands clenched into fists.

“Do I - do we need to be fighting anything right now?” he said.

Castiel, too, was squinting around the restaurant.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s gone.”

“We need to tell Sam,” Dean said. “There’s some kind of creature with time-stopping… word-twisting powers…”

“It didn’t make you tell any lies, did it?” Castiel said. Dean, who had been half out of his seat, sat back down again.

“What?” he said. “No. I mean - well, did it make you tell any lies?”

“No,” Castiel said. And Dean knew that he should be getting up, he should be looking for the creature, he should be calling Sam and going out to the Impala to get a weapon and maybe clearing this place and checking whether they had any rock salt in the kitchen, just in case -

But Castiel was smiling at him, and Dean couldn’t help but smile back.

“I guess… it would be a shame to waste this food.” Dean gestured towards Castiel’s partially eaten burger, and then to his own. “I mean, you _did_ say it was perfectly fine.”

Castiel nodded in agreement, dipped a fry in the heart-shaped ketchup and popped it into his mouth.

“We might as _well_ ,” Castiel’s smile only grew. “After all, we still need to order pie.”

Dean stared at him from across the table, his heart swelling.

“I love you,” he said.

Castiel stopped, and blinked.

“Do you mean that?”

Dean smiled.

“Every word.”

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO EVERYONE and happy April Fool's Day!! we hope you are having a wonderfully weird day. yes, we really did just write a normal fic and then run a bunch of words through the Thesaurus and choose our favourite. and yes, we made ourselves laugh way too much.
> 
> tag yourselves if you'd care to because we'd love to know your soul words. K_K_TiBal/thebloggerbloggerfun is "boogied out of the shadows" and whelvenwings is "go lick a duck"


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